Saturday, 28 January 2012

Into Eternity - a short-lived depiction

In
many respects Michael Madsen's film Into Eternity reiterates a very similar documentary called Countdown to zero. Both films debate on the very same
issue of dealing with the sources of nuclear power and depict their subjects from
the very same, distrustful angle. Countdown to zero focused mainly on analysing
the pros and cons of using nuclear power as weaponry. Into Eternity
provides an in-depth discussion over the safety concerns surrounding the
growing production of nuclear waste.

Yet
the difference that is most striking about the two films is their use of different narrative devices. While Countdown to zero was more of a
report whose aim was to raise awareness of the issue and propagate reducing
the number of atomic bombs at hand, Into Eternity is an evocative piece which
uses a poetic language to emphasise the uncertainty of a world in which
the nuclear waste will most probably outlive our civilisation.

The
film makes some very excellent points, stressing how difficult it is to
speculate over how successful the attempts of concealing the nuclear waste are going
to be. We are told that the waste remains radioactive for about 100,000 years
and the attempts of the Finnish entrepreneurs to build the first underground
facility that is designed to serve its purpose for that enormous amount of time is a herculean
task.

As
terrifying and eye-opening the subject of the documentary is, the film itself is
too vague at presenting the possible dangers of exposing the concealed nuclear
waste. That vagueness is probably caused by a very limited amount of research
available at the time of making it and so the film is doomed to run out of steam
about half way through its duration by repeating the same one-liners and warnings
over and over again.